


The Queen and her Lionheart

by Say_it_aint_so



Category: Person Of Interest - Fandom
Genre: F/F, fairytale AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:57:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3133589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Say_it_aint_so/pseuds/Say_it_aint_so
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every Queen needs her knight in shinning armor. Root's just having a hard time finding hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Queen and her Lionheart

“Why is it so hard to find good help these day?” Queen Root dramatically collapsed on the sunbed by the window, close enough that she could how the chess game between her uncle and his knight was progressing but far enough that neither could accuse her of cheating. It wasn’t her fault that the big lug was useless at chess and she liked seeing her Uncle Harry loose. She also liked the irritation it caused both men, but she’d never admit it to them. A queen was above all pettiness. And she was the Queen. 

“Perhaps,” Harold, Lord of Macchina, former regent and her uncle, said as he captured his knight’s castle. “You are not looking in the right place.” 

“I’m pretty sure that the knight school is where you’re supposed to find knights.”

“They don’t call it that.” Sir John, her uncle’s loyal knight who saved the kingdom from the warring neighbouring kingdom of Decima, shifted in his seat to look at her. 

“You should use proper names, Root. People will you a fool.” Harold put the white castle next to the row of pawns and knight he’d captured. “And no one will follow a fool.”

“Except other fools. And that’s all I found in the barracks. Honestly, Uncle Harry, I don’t know how we won the war with them. I watched them train and none of them have any creativity. It’s like watching ants fight. They do the exact same thing. How on earth did you find John?”

Harold smiled brightly at the memory. “On a street corner fighting with some injudicious youths.”

“So basically I should find a street urchin and make them my champion?” Root could see the appeal in such a move. Her main problem with the kingdom trained knights was that they relied too much on their training. An untrained fighter would be unpredictable. And it would look good to the people. 

“No.” John said in the monotonous tone she often tuned out, especially when he disagreed with her. 

“That is hardly what I was suggesting-“

“Sometimes Harold, you have the most wonderful ideas.” Root grinned as she jumped up and ran from the room.

“This is not what I had in mind when I suggested that she find a champion of her own.” Harold stared at the chessboard, dismayed. 

John shrugged. “It could be worse.”

“How?”

“You could be trying to find her a husband.”

“I would rather try to bathe Bear again. It would be just as futile.” He sighed and rubbed at his eyes under his spectacles. He couldn’t stop Root from doing anything that she wanted or make her do anything she didn’t want to. It would make her a brilliant queen but had made her a troublesome ward. “I’ll warn the guards that there may be trouble.”

“May be?”

“Will be.”

*/*/*

Root stood on the street corner, hands on hip, waiting. After the war with Decima, crime rates had dwindled under Harold and John’s watch during her reign. It was good for the country but it made finding a good fighter hard. There was no point in brawling in the streets if everyone was fed and the streets were clean. 

She sighed. Maybe she’d have to make do with the knights John had trained. There was a half decent one that she could live with. Lionel the Lionheart was John’s favourite but he’d never admit it. Lionel had been partnered with John’s first and only acknowledged favourite protégée, Joslyn Carter. The two had bonded over a night of brawls and drinking after Carter’s death and had worked together ever since.

But she didn’t want someone so closely linked to John and her uncle. She wanted to establish her identity as the Queen. She was different to them and she wanted the people to see it. She could do it by herself.

Someone bumped her as they ran past, delivering a point elbow to her waist. 

“Ow. Watch where you’re going!”

The small figure running ignored her, jumping over a wall three quarters their height and disappearing into the poorer part of town. 

“Someone get her! She all my money.” The portly shopkeeper stood in his doorway, pointing at where the shadow had disappeared. 

Root smiled. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Everyone in the city knew that his shop was a front for a slavery. Her guards hadn’t been able to touch him because of the lack of evidence. She wanted whoever was skilled enough to break in and steal all his money. 

She reached into her leather pouch and pulled out several gold coins. She handed them to the irate shopkeeper, who stared at her, seeming to recognise her but not being able to process it. “That should ease the pain in your soul. Now, can you describe that thief?”

/*/*/*/*

Root ambled down narrow dirt paths that separated the small houses that made up the poor part of town. She never really travelled in this area. And even in her plainest gown, she stood out. People stared. She smiled back. They looked at the ground. She tried not to take it personally. 

“What are you doing here?” A woman spoke from behind her, distain obvious in her voice

Root smiled as she turned around. “Looking for you.” She spoke before she’d seen the woman but guessed that it would be her. There were few people brave enough to rip off a slave merchant and use that tone with their queen. It could have only been the same person. “I have a job offer for you.”

“Me?” The woman was a head shorter than Root with dark hair and darker eyes. “I’m just a baker.”

“I’m a big fan of your work.” Root reached out and brushed as white streak off her face. The woman didn’t flinch. Her dark eyes just tracked the queen’s movement. “If you bake as well as you steal, you must be incredible.”

The woman’s hand snaked out and grabbed Root’s wrist. “You can’t prove anything.”

“I don’t want to.” She tried to keep her tone even and not let the woman know how much her grip hurt. “I just want you to be my champion, my knight in shining armour, so to speak. The armour’s optional, of course. I don’t know if you need it. There were, what, ten men in that slave shop and you beat them all.”

“Fifteen, hypothetically, of course.”

“Of course.”

The woman looked her in the eye. “You want me to be your champion? You think I’m a thief and I’m no knight.”

“If I wanted a knight, I’d have one but I want you.”

“I won’t work for you.” She let go of Root’s arm and stepped back.

“I pay incredibly well. You can have your heart’s desire. Anything you want.”

“Can you bring back my father? He died because of you.”

“No one has died in any war since I became Queen.” It was true. There had been a border skirmish that had the potential to reignite the war but she’d stopped with a well-trained assassination on the right person. Her uncle had disapproved, of course, but she’d stopped the war. 

“You and your uncle is why we were fighting Decima, it’s your fault. I’m not going to work for you.”

“Even if say that you will get your revenge against the people truly responsible for killing your father?”

“He’s dead. Killing more people won’t change that. It’ll just make me feel better.”

“Or,” Root stepped closer to her, noting how the woman’s lips tightened at her proximity. “It could save lives. And somewhere, a daughter won’t lose her father.”

“Don’t care.” The woman stepped back and turned on her heel. “Don’t get lost on your way back to the castle.”

*/*/*/*

One week later and everything continued as normal. Root attended to the minutia of ruling a country, accepting or ignoring advice from her uncle as she saw fit. She wondered about the thief she’d tried to recruit, wishing that she had accepted her offer. She would have been more amusing that watching Harold beat John at chess again. But she stopped herself from dwelling on what could have been. 

Or that’s what she told herself. 

She’d never told Harold or John about her meeting with the woman. They’d never approve, the hypocrites. So when the woman strolled into the sunroom and dropped her sword on the stone floor with a deafening clatter, neither of them understood what was going on. 

“I agree to your job offer, on two conditions.”

“Anything your heart desires,” Root grinned, enjoying both getting the champion she wanted and the twin looks of shock on Harold and John’s face. 

“I get to kill King Greer, when the time comes. And it will, I’m not stupid. You wouldn’t want someone like me unless you were planning something.”

Harold glared at her and she ignored him. “And the next?”

“I can refuse any order I want.”

“Done.” Root stepped forward and picked up the sword on the floor. “I hereby dub thee, you never did tell me your name-“

“Shaw.”

“I hereby dub thee, Knight Shaw, Champion of Queen Root. I promise you won’t regret this.”

“I’m regretting it already. Who do you want me to stab?”


End file.
